Cydia updated with iOS 7 icon and redesigned interface

New Cydia iOS 7

Cydia has received a major update this morning with several improvements. First and foremost, the app has received a long-awaited iOS 7 icon thanks to graphic designer Surenix. The package manager for jailbroken devices also gains a redesigned and better organized user interface, making it easier to manage repositories, see which packages you have installed and more. Read ahead for a full look at the update… 

Cydia has an all-new Sources tab in the bottom menu bar for convenient access, and you can now tap on an individual source to view all categories that are listed within it. Moreover, when Cydia is refreshing your sources, it will now show a loading indicator on a per-source basis. This approach is less intrusive than the old black bar and allows you to better identify which are your sources might be running slow.

New Cydia Loading Bar

There is also a new Installed tab for viewing which packages you have installed on your iOS device. The packages are still listed as they were on older Cydia versions, but they are now easier to access after opening the app. Within this tab, users can select from three modes that filters which packages are shown: User, Expert and Recent. User mode hides many framework and backend packages, while Expert shows everything.

Tapping on Recent shows your packages in chronological order based on their install date. This is such a long-awaited feature, and one that makes Cydia so much better. I don’t know how many times I have installed a jailbreak tweak, only for it to put my iPhone into Safe Mode and force me to uninstall it. Instead of looking through all my packages alphabetically, the tweak will be sitting right at the top for me to uninstall.

The new Sources and Installed tabs replace the Sections and Manage tabs respectively.

Another improvement to Cydia is the removal of the limitation that caused the error “wow, you exceeded the number of package names this APT is capable of” for some users.  A reader of ours Tony Laughlin‏ tweeted at us that this change opens to door to more piracy on Cydia, since users that install sources with lots of pirated tweaks are usually the ones that encounter this error for reaching the package limit. I’m sure, however, that Saurik has a good reason for this.

Cydia is also better integrated and more functional for a variety of people, with support for limited multitasking while a slide-up dialog panel is being displayed for login or payment using Google two-step authentication. International keyboards are now supported on every version of iOS.

The package manager offers translations for more languages: Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

Last, bug fixes were made for the status bar glitch, iPad rotation and blurry rendering.

To get the updated version of Cydia, simply open the app and tap on the Upgrade Essential button that appears. The update will proceed to install, and then you will be prompted to restart Cydia. If you have any issues updating or need help with troubleshooting Cydia, be sure to leave a comment below and our readers and I will attempt to give a helping hand.

What do you think of the new-look Cydia?